(This is a letter sent to a member of the
Access Research Network (ARN) whose name (***) is encoded on the ARN site as
"Dayton." On March 14, 2004 "Dayton" has posted this letter to the ARN website,
as a response to William Dembski's reply of March 13, 2004 to Mark Perakh's
essay titled "The Design Revolution? How William Dembski Is Dodging
Answers About Intelligent Design." Perakh's essay can be seen at this site as
well as at Talk Reason (
www.talkreason.org/articles/Revolution.cfm )

Posted on March 14, 2004

Hi, ***: Thanks for letting me see Dembski’s (sort of)
response to my latest post to Talk Reason. Of course, for those of us who have
been following Dembski’s activities there is little surprising in his epistle. I
have been criticizing his work since 1999, in a number of web postings and in
print, but he consistently avoided even acknowledging the existence of my
critique. Naturally, writing about his newest book, where he continued that
trend, I mentioned this fact. Now he asserts:

“Quite frankly, I've been less than impressed with the refrain that I've not
adequately addressed my critics. Mark Perakh seems to be leading the pack ((see,
for instance, his latest posting at Talk Reason). He seems especially put out
that I've not engaged him directly in print.”

If Dembski thinks I am “especially put out” that he did not
so far respond to a single of my arguments, this is just one more display of his
inflated self-confidence. Dembski wants to be viewed a scientist. In the
tradition of scientific disputes, when there is no response to critique, this is
construed as a sign that the criticized author has no good counter-arguments.
Therefore I have had no reasons to be “put out” by his silence in response to my
critique. His silence, from my standpoint, indicated that he simply could not
offer an adequate response. Recall that he never answered to some other critics
as well. Notably, he never acknowledged the critique of his work by David
Wolpert and Del Ratzsch. Are they also (I am quoting from Dembski) “recycling
other criticisms, and doing a poor job in the process”?

Since my critique of Dembski’s work has shown serious
deficiencies and plain errors in his output, and given both his well documented
self-admiration and the exaggerated praise of his work by his cohorts, it is not
surprising that in his opinion I did a “poor job.” Apparently only those who
compare him to Isaac Newton (as Rob Koons did) or acclaim his “formidable
intellect” (as Andrew Ruys did) have, in his opinion, done a good job.

Dembski’s assertion that in my critique I just “recycled”
the arguments of others, shows that either he did not read my critique or that
he deliberately distorts what he did read.

Recall that, when replying to the critique by Matt Young,
Dembski accused Young of borrowing arguments from me. This seems to be a
boilerplate notion used by Dembski in attempts to denigrate his opponents by
accusing them of “recycling” arguments of others thus making it unnecessary for
him to reply. Who allegedly borrows arguments from whom, seems to be chosen by
Dembski according to the needs of the moment.

None of those who took time to refer to my critique of
Dembski, including those who have had disagreements with me, has ever suggested
(as Dembski does) that I “recycled” the arguments of others. In fact, a good
part of my critique of Dembski’s work was written before I even had a chance to
read the critique by other authors. Here is just one example: in my post to Talk
Reason titled A Consistent Inconsistency dated July 2001 (which to a large
extent corresponds to chapter 1 in my book) I analyzed the faults in Dembski’s
explanatory filter using argument that not only have not been offered by any
other critics, but still stand alone and have not been repeated by anybody else
(but pointed out to in some reviews of my book). For example, one of these
arguments shows the lack of elementary logic in Dembski’s scheme – he suggests
estimating the probability of events without referring to their causal history.
This is impossible – in fact he has it backwards. For example, we assign to the
event high probability because this event is due to a law, not the other way
around, as Dembski’s schema prescribes. This argument is completely my own – and
this is equally true for many of my other arguments, related to his treatment of
probabilities, of information, of complexity, etc.

Although my article in question was dated July 2001, my
critique of Dembski initially appeared already in September 1999, in an article
about Behe’s book (posted on Talk Reason under the title Irreducible
Contradiction) which was before most of the other critiques of Dembski became
available.

However, even if some of my arguments happened to be
similar to arguments of others, this would only show that more than one critic
noticed the same faults in Dembski’s discourse, and this hardly could justify
Dembski’s dodging replies to such arguments.

To my mind, my arguments, regardless of whether they were
allegedly “recycled” or completely original, show that it was Dembski who did a
poor job. There is whole list of authors who share such a view. If, though,
Dembski is so sure that my arguments were poor, it would be an easy task for him
to demonstrate it. He did not.

A few words about his challenge to publicly debate him.
Here is a copy of my letter to Craig Nishimoto, the organizer of the Veritas
forum at UCLA, who invited me to debate Dembski:

“To Craig Nishimoto, Veritas forum at UCLA

From Mark Perakh

January 10, 2004

Dear Craig: I appreciate your effort aimed at arranging a
debate between myself and Dr. William Dembski. I also appreciate your offer
regarding honorarium and reimbursement of travel expenses.

Having thought about your suggestions in regard
to the debate in question, I have formed a quite firm opinion that I have to
decline your invitation. Although there are a number of reasons for that
decision, I’ll be brief in my explanation of them. Essentially, it would suffice
to point to three items which, to my mind, make my participation in a public
debate with William Dembski senseless, to wit:

(1)Discussing controversial issues in a public debate is,
generally speaking, the least productive way to come to a reasonable conclusion.
A public debate does not allow for an in-depth analysis of the arguments and
more often than not boils down to a competition in sound bites and superficial
charisma of the debaters. On the other hand, an exchange of written essays and
responses to them offers time for reflection and thought in contrast to the
fleeting character of an oral debate.

(2)A debate conducted in writing can reach a much wider
audience of both laypersons and experts.

(3)I have consulted with my doctor who, although leaving the
decision to me, is of the opinion that a trip to UCLA with the concomitant
physical and mental exertion entails certain risks to my health. I cannot drive
150 miles one way, so to partake of the debate I’ll have to take a commuter
plane from Palomar airport to either LAX or Burbank, to be met there and driven
to UCLA; due to the late hour of the planned debate, I’ll need to stay overnight
in a hotel, and to be taken back to the airport in the morning. Besides the not
unsubstantial expenses involved (and I appreciate your kind offer to cover them)
it simply does not make sense to go to such lengths in order to take part in an
event whose usefulness seems to be so uncertain.

All this said, and besides
the sufficiency of the above three reasons, I may add that, thinking of the
prospects of a debate with William Dembski, I feel that I simply am not
interested enough to debate him at this time. I have spent considerable time and
effort on debunking Dr. Dembski’s ideas, and I feel that at this time a further
effort in that direction is hardly warranted. Judging from Dr. Dembski’s
responses to other critics, a chance that in the course of the suggested debate
I will hear anything new or interesting from Dr. Dembski is very slim. Until
now, Dr. Dembski has been ceaselessly repeating his mantras on specified
complexity, the law of conservation of information, the alleged impossibility of
evolution because of the NFL theorems, and other similar topics, wherein his
arguments, to my mind, lack any substance. In his responses to critics he
largely avoided the essence of the disputed points indulging instead in
discussing such irrelevant matters as the degrees or pen names of his opponents,
or comparing his opponents to Lysenko, etc. Such behavior by Dr. Dembski is not
conducive to invoking an interest in debating him. Of course, if Dr. Dembski
chooses to reply to my critique in writing (something he has so far avoided) or
if in his forthcoming publications he will offer new ideas, possibly I will feel
that an additional contribution to the dispute on my part is warranted, but it
is not yet so.

Please feel free to share
this message with Dr. Dembski.

Best wishes. Mark Perakh”

I may add to the above letter a few more words. My doctor
turned to be right. I am going to have a serious surgery next week. I am almost
80 and it shows. Then, even if I were in excellent health, I hardly would be
interested in engaging in public debates the people of Dembski’s ilk. It is one
thing to rebuff arguments that appeared in print via an exchange of essays and
articles – such rebuttals do not imply that the object of critical remarks is
necessarily viewed as a legitimate opponent. Indeed, when, say, Skeptical
Inquirer pounces upon quacks it does not mean the status of quacks is
acknowledged as the same as of legitimate physicians. A public debate is a
different story – it implies the acceptance of a legitimate status of one’s
opponent as of a genuine scientist.

I have had many discussions and disputes in my
long career but all of them with serious scientists about questions which were
of professional interests within a purely scientific realm. Now the situation is
different.

As Dembski recently stated in a lecture at a
church in Texas, he believes
we are in a culture war here, and he admits that his primary motivation is his
belief that attributing evolution to materialistic mechanisms robs God of his
glory. I have no desire to taint my record by a public debate with a gentleman
who, in my view, rather than being a serious scientist, is using appearance of
“science” as a vehicle for his apologetics.